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Company With Osteoporosis Treatment Wins the ‘Super Bowl’

By Lora Kolodny May 10, 2010 6:21 pmMay 10, 2010 6:21 pm

Courtesy of McCombs School of Business, Texas Venture LabsBiologicsMD team competing at Global Moot Corp.

The McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin, held its Global Moot Corp business plan competition over the weekend. Billing itself as the Super Bowl of business plan competitions, Moot Corp invites top teams from previous, qualifying competitions to compete for a grand prize of $25,000 cash and $70,000 of in-kind services. It began in 1984 and was the first competition of its kind.

This year’s winner is BiologicsMD, a University of Arkansas team featured in The Prize in April (when it won at the Rice University Business Plan Competition). The company is developing a drug called OsteoFlor to treat osteoporosis with a single, annual or semi-annual injection (daily injections are the norm today).

Misty Stevens, co-founder and chief operating officer of BiologicsMD, explained how it works: “We all have cells in our bones that take away old, degraded bone from the tiny cracks and fractures that happen all the time. When things are working well, other cells in the system rebuild and keep the bones healthy. As you age the cells that rebuild bones can’t keep up with the ones taking away the degraded bones. OsteoFlor takes something called a parathyroid hormone, which stimulates new bone growth, and sticks it to the bone with a collagen binding agent.”

A secondary effect of OsteoFlor is that it helps heal open fractures, said the company’s chief executive, Paul Mlakar, on Sunday. That means it could have many customers beyond those, including post-menopausal women, who suffer from osteoporosis.

Mr. Mlakar said the company is pursuing Department of Defense, Small Business Innovation Research grant funding to help it advance its drug through clinical trials and bring it to a broad market. Because the Defense Department is concerned with care for veterans and because Mr. Mlakar’s teammates claim about an 85 percent success rate obtaining grants for which they apply, he believes BiologicsMD is in a good position to obtain this kind of financing.

He also said the company will use winnings from Moot Corp (and other competitions) to continue research, build a Web site, and present to investors and pharmaceutical companies, such as the Life Science Angels Network and Amgen. During the 2009-2010 school year, BiologicsMD won $102,500 in cash grants, $150,000 worth of business services and a $300,000 investment offer in six competitions.

The team’s poise and ability to answer tough questions impressed Phil Speros, who is a Moot Corp finals judge (and former competitor) and chief executive of Halsa Pharmaceuticals. For the first time, the competition allowed judges to interrupt students’ presentations at any moment with a question. The format, Mr. Mlakar and Mr. Speros both noted, is meant to resemble a “real world” pitch for angel or venture capital funding.

In general, Moot Corp is shifting to become more “investor-centric,” said the competition’s director, Rob Adams. “There’s not really anything ‘moot’ about the competition anymore. What’s important here is not a good idea on paper, but how the fundamental work gets done. Start-ups in our event actually want to launch, like most graduate students studying entrepreneurship in M.B.A. programs. We expect them to validate their ideas in the market and figure out how to do things actually, not just as an academic exercise.”

In this spirit, he said, the University of Texas will be changing the competition’s name to the Venture Labs Global Investment Competition, and changing some of its criteria and rules next year.

There’s been a sea change in competitions, said Mary K. Marsden, a semi-finals judge at Moot Corp who is also founder of Touchpoint Strategies. “I’ve been judging since 1995 at several competitions,” she said. “The plans this year are better written than any I’ve seen before. And they’re coming from companies that in many cases have already obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars to start-up their companies.”

Other shifts Ms. Marsden has observed at competitions recently include the participation of more women in leadership roles and more companies with licensing deals versus raw inventions.

See The Prize’s guide to coming business plan competitions. And here’s how to win a competition.

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